With new iPhones on the horizon, Apple anxiety heats up again

The buzz will undoubtedly continue for the next 12 days leading up to the Cupertino tech giant’s next big product launch, which it announced earlier this week. During that time, investors may well continue to bump up the price of Apple shares, just as they’ve been doing all day today. Analysts will weigh in, tripping over themselves to look prescient once their prognostications prove accurate. Apple bloggers will either make guesses about what the new iPhones will like, or actually share top-secret data about the devices that have been somehow leaked for all to see.

Here’s what that buzz looks like on Friday:

Apple Shares Take a Hike

Apple shares at one point on Friday rose to nearly $299, an intraday record, amid speculation that the company plans to release three new smartphones at its launch, and that may include one with a larger display than previous iPhone models. By mid-day, trading volume stood at 25.6 million shares, higher than the average of 24.7 million. This bump comes on top of Apple’s recent rise to become the world’s first trillion-dollar company, hitting that magical market cap 42 years after it was founded. Apple achieved profits of $11.5 billion in the last quarterly results announced in June, thanks to record sales that hit $53.3 billion. At the time, CEO Tim Cook said “we’re thrilled to report Apple’s best June quarter ever, and our fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth. Our Q3 results were driven by continued strong sales of iPhone, Services and Wearables, and we are very excited about the products and services in our pipeline.”

New iPhones Will Ride an Already Swelling Wave

In June, Apple announced its guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 that included expected revenue of $60–62 billion. “Growth was strong all around the world,” Apple’s finance chief, Luca Maestri, said during the conference call. Snazzy new devices would help pump that growth even more, say some analysts.

Just a Hint of Gold

Reading the tea leaves, bloggers and analysts said they expect Apple to release an iPhone with a edge-to-edge display similar to the iPhone X but using less-costly LCD screen technology. Apple’s Sept. 12 event invitation included a bunch of the color gold, fueling speculation that the company may launch a gold-colored successor to the iPhone X, which last year was made available in silver and gray. Documents filed with the FCC and unsealed earlier this year show Apple had sought an OK for a gold version of its iPhone X. And shortly after Apple’s announcement this week, tech bloggers at 9to5Mac posted photos of two gold iPhone models stacked on top each other, with a larger-screened model on the bottom. Both models resemble the current iPhone X.

Credit: 9to5Mac

The Super Sleuth on the Apple Case

The same tech-news site also said the new flagship model will be called the iPhone XS and that Apple also planned to release a new version of the Apple Watch with a larger display by reducing the edges around it. The juicy news on 9to5Mac came from Guilherme Rambo, a noted Mac and iOS developer based in Brazil who has a knack for digging up Apple’s secrets and analyzing leaks. As tech writer Gordon Kelly over at Forbes put it, “following months of Apple dropping hints about its new iPhones deep inside iOS 12, now the company has ‘accidentally’ misplaced an official image of its iPhone XS and iPhone XS Plus for everyone to see. Credit for the discovery goes to 9to5Mac and Rambo who has attained finalised press photography of the new iPhones, along with confirmation of a new color.

“Watch” this Space

As CNet reported earlier this week, “now that Apple’s iPhone event is officially set for Wednesday, Sept. 12, expectations for an updated Apple Watch 4 are higher than before. In fact, we may already know what it looks like. In the three years since the original Apple Watch debuted in 2015, it’s become the top watch on the market. And even though updates have included GPS and full swim-ready water resistance in the Apple Watch Series 2, and onboard cellular connectivity in Apple Watch Series 3, the overall look of the wearable has remained pretty consistent.” That could soon change, said the report: “Could this be where Apple makes some bigger changes to how it actually looks — just in time to go up against a brand-new Google smartwatch and the Samsung Galaxy Watch, which launched on Aug. 24? It looks like the smartwatch battle will be more heated in 2018 than ever.”

Reports suggest a new Apple Watch unveiled later this month could be a game-changer. “The Apple Watch Series 1 was the best-selling smartwatch globally in the second quarter, according to Counterpoint, while the Apple Watch Series 3 placed fourth,” Emily Bary writes at MarketWatch. “Apple doesn’t give sales figures for its watch lineup, but Cook said on the company’s last earnings call that the Apple Watch “delivered record June-quarter performance with growth in the mid-40% range. Apple is expected to debut a Series 4 device with an edge-to-edge screen at its Sept. 12 iPhone launch event.”